Quick on the Uptake

This article discusses that the Arizona Health Science Center has decided to install a power plant. A San Diego contractor, Solar Turbines Inc., was hired to design and build a cogeneration system, a gas turbine to generate electricity, and a heat-recovery boiler to produce steam. Rentech Boiler Systems Inc. of Abilene, Texas, was called in to supply the boiler. The water will be carried to the boiler by a complex system of pipes that weave around various features of the power plant. It was the design of the piping system that landed on the desk of Rentech’s chief engineer, Don Morran, for structural analysis. Morran specified pipe data, including size, corrosion allowance, insulation, and contents; material data, including allowable stresses from the standard library; and load data, including temperature and pressure loads for various operating and test conditions. To verify that the piping structure complied with the ASME code, Morran displayed the code stress ratios for each load combination, which indicated that all stresses were safely below the allowable value.